She was still living when all the hype about the Bermuda Triangle and the loss of Flight 19 hit the news, and she was astonished and disgusted at the outrageous claims that were made about the incident. First, she pointed out the fact that during World War II, MANY, MANY planes went down all over the world, leaving no trace, and there have been virtually no attempts to attribute these losses to anything but military action, mechanical failure, or human error. World War II had ended by the time Flight 19 disappeared, but that only eliminated the possibility of military action.

The other causes could still apply. Most naval aircraft were equipped with automatic distress signal transmitters that were supposed to float free and start sending a radio signal when a plane made a forced landing in water, providing search and rescue craft with a "fix" on the location. The proponents of the Bermuda Triangle nonsense have made much of the fact that not a single signal was received from the transmitters that had been aboard the planes of Flight 19. This may not be EXACTLY what she said, but a pretty close quotation of my mother's reaction to this argument was "Those damned things didn't even WORK most of the time, and even when they did, it wasn't for very long!" We also know that the seas were heavy, and radio transmission conditions were poor, so it should come as no surprise that no automatic distress signals were picked up.

Depending on which sources you read, most of the planes were missing some or all of their navigation equipment, and one essential instrument (a clock) was missing from the planes of the student pilots. It appears that from something else my mother told me that there was no evil plan or design behind this omission. The simple fact was that the Navy had a major problem with clocks being stolen out of planes. These clocks were massive instruments costing hundreds of dollars (even in the 1940's), and were designed to keep very accurate time. I have in my possession at least one letter my mother wrote to her mother mentioning this problem of theft, and further describing how a surprise search of the entire base turned up several clocks in personal lockers and other locations they were not intended to be. So, maybe it's just possible that they were short of clocks the day Flight 19 took off.

I realize that this doesn't add much to the material we already have which debunks the Bermuda Triangle, but perhaps it does add one more opinion of someone versed in navigation and naval aviation to the others which saw nothing mysterious about the disappearance of Flight 19